Bikini Luxe: To Hell With Market Conventions, Go Viral Yourself

Many people in sales and marketing will tell you that the upper teen/ college girl fashion market is a very, very hard market to penetrate. This is Fussy Fashion incarnate. These young women care what they wear, and they sure as hell care what they dare to wear when it comes to bikinis and hot-weather clothes.

The old ideas of “herd buying” no longer works. People do not want to look the same. Bargain basement BS isn’t on the shopping list. The online generations, in particular, have made that point, but seem to have been largely ignored by a complacent, entirely out of touch mainstream market.

These generations don’t know, or care, who or what some of the old labels are. They’re museum pieces to them. If you’re a 16-24-year-old woman, why would you be interested in wearing the fashion equivalent of the Dead Sea Scrolls?

Some people in the industry do get it, and they’re the ones getting the business. A case in point is Bikini Luxe founded by Candice Galek, a very hard-working, highly efficient company in Miami.

Nobody knew who Bikini Luxe was a year ago, and in that year, it’s got a million hits from exploring women and their boyfriends. Brands likeBeach Bunny and other designer swimwearare top of the line.

This company does things very differently. The bottom line is high quality, upper market, and clothing of all types. They don’t have a large product range, but they’re getting a stampede of interest. People are finding them, without much more than some good SEO. The rest is grass-roots buying.

According to market theory, upper market clothes need massive marketing. They need to be seen in Vogue and everywhere else.

Wrong. What should be scaring the sanctimonious stuffing out of the market about Bikini Luxe is the fact that it’s doing all this without major hype.

This type of success doesn’t “just happen”. It’s not supposed to happen. As though mere human beings could find a product for themselves without two entire industries – fashion and marketing – helping them. Ifyou’re getting the impression that the old fashion market is suffering from severe senility, you’re getting warm.

A Saga of Success

Bikini Luxe is shooting the mold, not just breaking it. They’re not “cutesy”, they’re strong and sexy. They’re not sheepishly trying to get noticed, they’re competing with big brands on their own turf, and winning.

This is what’s called hard business. It’s real money, and real people doing business in real-time. To hell with theory. This is a really unusual performance, and the industry hard-noses would be strongly advised to pay attention.

The classic 4Ps of marketing, Placement, Product, Price and Positioning, have added another P in this case – Perception. Consumers are treating Bikini Luxe as “our brand”. That spells success in any language and industry.

This is no amateur hit and miss operation, either. The products are up to the second. Whatever they put online, their market seems to like it. The likely reasons are good market research, community involvement, and quality. This is very obviously what people are looking for, and Bikini Luxe has it.